


Lost (and Lost, and Lost) and Found

by Settiai



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Critical Role Reverse Bang, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Inspired by Fanart, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 05:11:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8652265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Settiai/pseuds/Settiai
Summary: "Why does this happen every time the two of us get separated from the others?"  Or, if you prefer, three times Grog and Percy found themselves lost in the woods.Written for the 2016 Critical Role Reverse Bang.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the 2016 _Critical Role_ Reverse Bang, and it was inspired by a lovely piece of fanart drawn by [maileme](http://maileme.tumblr.com/).
> 
> At this time, the artwork can be found [at this link](http://settiai.tumblr.com/post/153760952134) over on Tumblr, if you'd like to leave any comments for the amazing artist.

**(weeks)**

"This cannot be happening."

Percy didn't realize that he'd spoken the words out loud until there was a grunt behind him, a wordless sound of agreement. Or possibly indigestion. It was hard to tell with Grog sometimes.

Frowning, he glanced over his shoulder. Grog was leaning against a nearby tree, a bored look on his face that didn't bode well. Percy hadn't spent all that much time with the goliath in the weeks since he'd joined their motley group, but he'd learned quickly that "bored" and "Grog" were not two words that went together very well.

Well, technically, "bored" didn't go well with the names of any of his traveling companions. He'd already learned that lesson well over the past few weeks. But the point still stood.

Percy turned his attention back to the so-called map that he was holding, trying his best to make heads or tails out of it. He knew how to read maps. He was _good_ at reading maps, if he said so himself. Whatever in the hells Scanlan had given him back in the tavern, though, didn't even remotely qualify as a map.

Honestly, a child could have drawn a better one. He had no idea how he could possibly be expected to find wherever it was that the others wanted to meet up based on it.

Percy still wasn't entirely certain what had happened in the first place. Oh, he wasn't a fool. He knew that Scanlan and the twins had done _something_. Presumably something illegal considering the ruckus that had been going on in the streets when the rest of the S.H.I.T.s – and, oh, how he hated that name no matter how much he owed them for saving his life – had slipped out a side door of the tavern they'd been in and gone their separate ways. That much had been clear the moment Scanlan had shoved a piece of paper in his hand and told him to keep it with him, just in case.

_"Just in case of what?" Percy had asked, his eyebrows raising as he glanced at the clearly hand drawn map that he'd been handed._

_Scanlan had grinned. "Trust me," he had said. "You'll know. Call it Plan B."_

The next thing he had known, those three had disappeared and Keyleth had dropped down in a chair beside him, a similar map in her hands and a frown on her face. And then there had been yelling, and explosions, and a couple of threats, and... well, everything else that normally accompanied the twins and Scanlan disappearing without any supervision.

Less than a month with them, and Percy already considered that normal. That said a lot about his life nowadays, didn't it?

Behind him, Grog cleared his throat. Loudly. "Aren't we supposed to meet up with the others?"

Percy closed his eyes and mentally counted to ten in his head. Then he opened them again and pointedly didn't look in the goliath's direction. "I'm working on it, Grog," he said through gritted teeth. "Just give me a moment, please?"

Grog snorted.

It took some restraint, but Percy didn't snap anything back at him no matter how much he wanted to do so. He knew that it wouldn't do any good. The only person that Grog actually listened to was Pike, and – as far as he knew – she had ended up heading in the same direction as Keyleth and Tiberius.

He just hoped they were having better luck at finding the others than he and Grog were just then.

Percy sighed. "Does this happen often?"

There was silence for a long moment. "What?" Grog asked, sounding confused.

"This," Percy repeated, gesturing at the surrounding area in general as he turned back towards Grog. "Things going wrong. Splitting up. Finding each other with—" He trailed off, waving the map that Scanlan had given him.

"Oh." Grog blinked a few times. "Sorta. Not really?" He shrugged. "Sometimes."

"That's three different answers," Percy said dryly.

Grog shook his head. "No it's not."

Percy opened his mouth. Then he closed it. It wasn't worth the effort. It was really wasn't. There was a good reason that, in the weeks since they let him out of that damn cell, he'd done his best not to spend much of his time in Grog's presence.

There was an awkward silence between them for a moment or two. Then Grog shuffled his feet, looking for all the world like an overgrown schoolboy who had a question but didn't want to actually ask it.

And it said a lot about how Percy's life had been going lately that a thought like that even crossed his mind.

"What is it, Grog?" Percy asked with a sigh, turning his attention back toward the map. He rotated it, trying to see if that made it any more legible. It didn't.

Grog cleared his throat. "So where are we going?"

"I'm still working on it," Percy said, a bit more snappily than he'd intended, moving his gaze from the map long enough to glance over in Grog's direction. "The map Scanlan gave me is, uh, less than helpful."

There was another pause.

"Are we lost?" Grog asked, narrowing his eyes.

"We're not lost," Percy snapped. "We're just not certain where we are."

Grog opened his mouth as if he was about to say something. Then he closed it, frowning. "Oh," he said. "Huh. I guess that makes sense."

Percy turned his attention back towards the map, narrowing his eyes as he studied it.

A moment or two later, a shadow fell over the map.

Percy sighed and reached up to push his glasses higher up on his nose. "Yes, Grog?"

"Can I take a look?" Grog asked, very clearly trying to glance over his shoulder.

He didn't laugh. It took some effort, but he kept quiet. He'd only known the goliath for a few weeks, after all, and he'd seen him quite literally rip the arm off of a half-orc only three days earlier. The last thing he wanted to do was to piss him off.

But, _still_.

"I thought you couldn't read," Percy said, shooting Grog a skeptical look.

If it had been anyone else, Percy would have said that Grog looked hurt at that. As it was, his brain stuttered over the words "Grog" and "hurt" being in the same sentence.

"I'm good with pictures," Grog grumbled, reaching out and grabbing the map from Percy's hands.

Percy let out a half-hearted protest, but he didn't actually try to grab the so-called map back from Grog. He'd already all but washed his hands of it. If Grog wanted to try to get something out of it, then he was welcome to try. It was practically take a miracle for him to be able to—

"It's this way," Grog said, gesturing off to his left. He sounded pretty damn sure about it too.

Percy stared at him.

"What?" Grog asked, shrugging a bit. He sounded almost self-conscious, which was something that Percy had never expected to hear coming from a goliath that could snap him like a twig. "I told you, I'm good with pictures."

*

**(months)**

Percy groaned as he felt himself slowly coming back to consciousness. His head was splitting, and he could feel something dry and sticky on the side of his face that couldn't be anything other than blood. The world was bouncing slightly, a steady up-and-down motion that wasn't exactly helping him feel any less nauseated.

He let out another groan.

The movement stopped. "Hey Percy, you waking up?"

Oh. He recognized that voice.

Reluctantly, Percy forced his eyes open. His vision was slightly blurred, and it took him a second or two to realize that it was at least partially because he wasn't wearing his glasses. Presumably some of it was the obvious head wound, though. He narrowed his eyes, trying to get them to focus with only a little success.

He was hanging upside down over what he could only assume was Grog's shoulder. Not counting the fact that he'd recognized his voice a moment earlier, there was only one member of the group who was strong enough to just throw him over their shoulder like a sack of flour.

"What happened?" Percy asked, grimacing as the drums in his head decided to double their efforts. It wasn't the worst he had ever felt, not by a longshot, but it was definitely fairly high up on the list.

There was a sudden bit of movement, and the world went grey for a second or ten. When his vision cleared, he was sitting on the ground. Grog was crouched down in front of him, poking lightly at his shoulder. "You there?"

"Don't do that," Percy grumbled, reaching up to swat at Grog's hand. "Where are my glasses?"

Grog didn't particularly try to hide the relieved look that flashed across his face. Percy quickly squashed down any feelings that he might have had at such an overt sign of companionship. He'd been traveling with the others for months now, and it was becoming more and more difficult to pretend that he didn't care at least a little bit about his companions. Still, he hadn't stopped trying.

"My glasses?" Percy repeated, raising his eyebrows.

"Oh yeah." Grog reached into a small pouch that he wore at his side, one that Percy had honestly never noticed before. He didn't necessarily spend all that much time with Grog, though, so he thought he could be forgiven.

A moment later, Grog was holding his glasses out to him.

Percy took them with a nod. There were still mostly in one piece, which was something at least. There were some scratches on the lenses that he didn't remember there being before, though, plus one of the smaller lenses actually had a crack running through it. Something had clearly gone very wrong at some point in the recent past.

"What happened?" Percy asked again, since he'd never actually gotten an answer.

Grog laughed.

That... didn't bode well, from past experience.

"Grog?" Percy asked, narrowing his eyes.

With a grin that bared just a few too many teeth not to be a little threatening, Grog shrugged. "Remember that cliff Vex warned us about?"

It took a moment or two for his rather muddled mind to think back, but Percy finally nodded. "Yes," he said slowly. "She thought it was unstable, so we—"

Percy trailed off, a vague flash of memory running through his head. The ground crumbling under his feet. Cursing. A few terrified seconds of weightlessness. Pain. Darkness.

"Oh."

If anything, Grog's grin grew even toothier.

Percy closed his eyes for a moment, trying very hard to resist the urge to start swearing. "Where are the others?" he asked, reluctantly opening them again.

Grog pointed upwards.

It took a lot longer than it should have for Percy to notice that there was a cliff face nearby. In his defense, he had a head injury and there were enough trees between them and the rock to make it not quite as noticeable. Especially with the sun starting to set somewhere in the distance. That was the excuse he was planning on clinging to, at least.

"Oh," Percy repeated, a little more softly this time.

Then he took a closer look at Grog. The goliath had a fair number of scrapes on his skin that had to be recent, considering Pike usually did a good job of healing even minor injuries that they got. They looked suspiciously like the ones that Percy was starting to notice on his own skin.

And, while his memories were still a bit vague, he didn't remember Grog being anywhere near him when he stepped too close to the edge of the cliff. Which seemed to imply...

... well, it implied something that Percy didn't want to think about just then, if he was honest with himself. It was bad enough realizing that he was starting to care about their ragtag group of misfits more than he should, without trying to process the fact that maybe it wasn't entirely one-sided.

Especially since Grog was eying him warily, a look on his face that Percy couldn't quite interpret.

"Are we lost?" Percy asked, narrowing his eyes.

Grog shook his head. "Nope." Then he paused. "Not entirely."

Percy opened his mouth. Then he closed it. His head was hurting too much for him to even contemplate trying to start _that_ conversation just then.

Above them, at the top of the cliff, there was a bright flash of light.

Percy shot Grog a questioning look.

"I've been following that," Grog said, gesturing in the general direction of the light that was already disappearing above them.

With another one of those looks that Percy couldn't quite read – and gods damn it, just how bad had he hit his head that _Grog_ was hard for him to read? – Grog pushed himself to his feet. Then he reached down and offered Percy his hand.

After a moment's hesitation, Percy took it.

*

**(years)**

It was the silence that was getting to him.

Percy took in a deep breath, holding it in for a moment before letting it back out. It was a little shakier than he'd intended it to be, but all things considered that wasn't entirely unexpected.

"Why does this happen _every_ time the two of us get separated from the others?" he asked quietly. "Did we do something to make an enemy of forests?"

Grog didn't say anything, not that Percy had been expecting anything different. His chest was still moving up and down fairly steadily, which was the only thing keeping Percy from panicking. It didn't erase his worry, though, considering the healing potion he'd fed Grog earlier apparently hadn't done a damn thing to help him.

It wasn't right, seeing Grog so still. It happened so rarely, but when it did... well, it was never a good thing. Not that it was when any of them fell unconscious. Still, with Grog, it was even worse somehow due to its rarity.

Percy pointedly squashed down any and all memories of Grog falling face down in the snow outside the cave with the sphinx, his body cold and his chest unmoving.

The woods around them were dark and cold, and if it wasn't for the almost full moon above them Percy doubted he would have been able to see anything. As it was, the moon and stars were giving him enough light to at least see Grog's still form.

It was better than nothing, he supposed.

The corpses of the creatures that had attacked them were still resting where they'd fallen, not too far away. Percy wasn't strong enough to drag Grog anywhere, no matter how much he would have liked to move away from them.

"Is anyone there?" he asked, reaching up to touch his earring again.

Just like the last four times he'd tried, there wasn't an answer. The others would find them eventually, he trusted that much. Either they'd come within range on their own, or Keyleth would scry for them. It wouldn't be much longer, most likely. They didn't like straying too far from each other, none of them did, not since Emon had fallen.

Percy reached down and pressed his hand against Grog's neck, just feeling his pulse beating slowly but steadily. He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing in time with it.

In his ear, there was a burst of sound.

Eyes snapping open, Percy reached up to touch his earring with his free hand. The other stayed where it was, resting against Grog's skin.

His mouth twisted into a relieved smile.

"I told you they'd find us eventually," Percy said quietly. "Hang on, will you? They'll be here soon."

**Author's Note:**

> Find me over on Tumblr. (http://settiai.tumblr.com/)


End file.
